said, cursing myself for thanking her for anything. I slipped my unused notebook back in my bag and grabbed the strap, slinging it on my shoulder as I stood.
“I’ll be in touch,” she said, shifting her attention to her computer, effectively dismissing me.
I floated away, though this time I was caught in static, hovering in a fog of limbo.
I’d been right to be nervous about coming here, but the sad fact was that I should have known it would go this way. I should have known things had been too easy, that Janessa had been entirely too malleable. Until today. I was a rube, a greenhorn, a naive girl with stars in her eyes who honest to God thought people said what they meant and meant what they said.
Lies, lies, lies.
And the play Janessa had made put me in danger of losing more than I’d bargained for.
Because I would have to come up with a way to impress Janessa, or I’d be faced with making a sacrifice— Tommy or my career.
My only comfort was that I knew exactly what sacrifice I would make.
I wouldn’t betray Tommy. Not for any job. Not for all the money.
Not for anything.
❖
Tommy
I picked up my phone again, swiping Amelia’s last message saying she was on her way home to check the time of her last message.
The two chapters I’d had to write had flown out of me in the time she was gone. Though it wasn’t inspiration exactly. Not to say that I wasn’t inspired. The last eighteen hours had woken something in me that I found seeping onto the pages, a deep, beautiful longing injected into the characters as they fought their way out of the burning city, dwarves at their back. When Aislinn fell by Ardukan’s sword, the anguish Wynn felt had seized me, tightening my throat, detonating something in my chest, flinging shrapnel into my ribs.
It was good, the whole thing. Really good. Even my editor was impressed, which, given the circumstance, was really saying something.
Gus nearly hopped in my lap again, taunting me with his slobbery tennis ball. I dislodged it from his jaw and chucked it across the room. He bounded off after it without a care in the world beyond that ball.
I knew just how he felt.
I was the big, dumb dog, chasing Amelia down until I caught her. And now that I had her, I’d hang on to her with all the gusto and joy that Gus showed.
She was unlike any woman I’d ever known, innocent and untouched, brilliant and unexpectedly brash, honest and humble and braver than she knew.
She’d taken me on after all.
For years, the only women in my acquaintance were famous in some way or another, looking for publicity and press like I was. But Amelia was pure, her motivation a direct influence of her goodness. And I found myself craving that goodness, wanting to breathe it in and let it fill me up.
She was everything right in the world. And now she was mine.
Trust was such a complicated thing. I’d never given mine easily. Years of conditioning had left me suspicious of almost everyone I met. My dad had been a factor, though I didn’t like to admit it. We’d been abandoned, left to fend for ourselves. Ma had been abandoned in ways we could never make up for. She’d been alone. Even now, she was alone, alone and sick. Never would she know true love, and the thought set a sick twisting in my stomach.
I’d figured love was for fools and dreamers. Giving your heart meant cutting a hole in your chest. And no one could be trusted with that offering. Time and time again, it’d been proven. Not that I’d been hurt. I’d have to give my heart to get hurt, and no one besides my mother and brother had ever been deemed worthy.
Until Amelia.
It was a sweet, reckless feeling to let her in. I didn’t remember ever making a choice on the matter—she’d slipped into my heart so naturally, so easily. There were a hundred reasons why, but the truth was that I didn’t believe Amelia had an unkind, cruel bone in her body. Not once had I wondered over her intentions. They were offered plainly and without hesitation.
It had never been a question in my mind. I trusted her implicitly, and that trust had grown every day, every minute.
The undeniable urge to protect her was reciprocated. She would fight for me just like I would fight for her. And that